If only I'd known then what I know now…

It’s Wednesday again, which means it’s time for a weekly heapin’ helpin’ of Hodgepodge. Our Hodgepodge hostess, Joyce, has served up another great set of questions, this week, so let’s sit a spell and ponder the answers…

1. It was decided on Sunday the Denver Broncos will meet the Seattle Seahawks in this year’s Superbowl. So when was the last time you bowled? Not where you thought this question was going is it? Do you like to bowl? Are you any good?

It’s been thirty-something years since the first, last, and only time I ever bowled. I am not very good at bowling, therefore, I do not like it. I was actually thrilled when we had to leave the bowling alley early to go home! I can’t even seem to bowl a decent game on our Wii 😦

2. Should sports stars be role models?

Given the negative publicity surrounding so many of our sports stars, these days, probably not. Of course, there are always a few exceptions, but not very many.

3. January is National Oatmeal month…are you a fan? How do you like your oats?

I learned to eat instant, weight loss oatmeal, last winter because it’s filling and is low in sugar. I’m not a huge fan, but I can eat it, occasionally. Banana nut bread is my favorite flavor.

4. What is one book on your reading list for 2014?

The book at the top of my list is the one I’m in the process of reading now–Lone Survivor. I’m about 1/4 of the way through it, and I’m reading it on my Kindle. So far, so good!

I am, also, in the process of reading a series of books entitled The Adventures of Lily Lap, co-written by fellow Hodgepodger, Mary Ann Kinsinger, from over atA Joyful Chaos. (Hi, Mary Ann!) I’m enjoying these books, and plan to share them with my granddaughter, Madison, when she’s a little older.

5. What would you like your future self to say to your present self?

“Do not spend your time worrying and stressing over things. They will work out the way they are supposed to.”

6. When scrolling through the TV guide, what is one movie title that makes you want to stop, grab the popcorn, and watch for a while?

I can’t choose just one, so here are several of my favorites: Rainman, Steel Magnolias, Pretty Woman, Driving Miss Daisy, Forrest Gump, Dances With Wolves, and Mr. Holland’s Opus, to name a few.

7. What are two style trends you hope never come back into fashion?

My all-time, least-favorite, style trends became popular in the early 90’s. They were (1) saggy pants and (2) parachute pants. Both trends were awful, and I can’t believe people actually wore either one!

Occasionally, I’ll still see this, today, and it always makes me cringe!

Random:

Last Wednesday, I asked for your prayers concerning our son-in-law, who had been unemployed since before Christmas. I’m pleased to tell you that our prayers have been answered! Our son-in-law got a job offer, on Friday, and actually began working at his new job, on Monday. Praise the Lord!

Also, Jennifer, our daughter-in-law, is returning to work, today, following twelve weeks of maternity leave. Jennifer was able to secure a slot for Evan, in a Christian daycare center [across the street from the hospital where she works], but his slot won’t become available until Monday. Our son, Brad, will be staying home from work, and keeping Evan for three days. Jennifer’s work days are 12 hours long, and she hasn’t been away from Evan for more than a few hours since his birth. I’m praying for a smooth transition for everyone involved.

Even though it has been “one of those weeks” at our house, I’m still joining Joyce and friends for The Hodgepodge. I’m hoping to be able to link up before Ed and I leave for the hospital to have his procedure done. Your prayers would be appreciated today. Ed did really well with his prep, I hope his colonoscopy goes well, too. I haven’t slept a wink all night!

As for me, I got a good report at the doctor’s office, except for the fact that my thyroid levels are very low. I suffer from an underactive thyroid, and have to take daily medication. For some unexplained reason, my levels have dropped extremely low all of the sudden. This explains why I’ve been feeling so tired lately! I thought perhaps it was because of my diet! Hopefully, an increase in my thyroid medication will have me feeling more energetic soon. On the positive side, my cholesterol and triglyceride levels were the best they’ve been in years! I’ve also lost a total of 25 pounds. Yay, for giving up sugar!

1. April showers bring May flowers…what have you been showered with this month?

Unseasonable weather! From the look of everyone else’s blogs, I don’t think I’m alone in this. One day I’m wearing shorts, the next day it’s back to sweaters. What the heck?! Then there’s the unusual amount of wind we’ve been having…it seems more like March than April. I won’t even comment on the ridiculous amount of rainfall…

2. What is the nature of compassion? Is it learned or innate? Can compassion be learned? If you’re a parent is this something you’ve purposely sought to instill in your children, and if so how?

Boy, Joyce, this one is deep…For me, compassion is an emotion, and it’s felt in my heart. A certain amount of compassion is innate, but I believe some of it is taught, as well. For example, very young children have to be taught not to hurt each other, or to respect nature and animals. I believe a person’s personality also dictates how compassionate they are. Some people are born with a kind, compassionate spirit, while others seem to be more self-centered and less caring. Ed and I always tried to lead our children by example. I ‘m proud of all three of our off-spring, so we must done something right.

3. Do you prefer to watch romantic comedy or romantic drama…or are you rolling your eyes saying bring on the action flicks?

I prefer to watch a romantic drama, with some comedy thrown in for good measure! Pretty Woman and Steel Magnolias are two of my all-time favorites.

4. It’s April which means baseball season is officially upon us here in the US of A. Humphrey Bogart is quoted as saying “A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” Agree or Disagree?

I agree. I’m more of a ‘hot dog at the ballgame’ kind of girl. I’d be like a ‘fish out of water’ eating roast beef at the Ritz!

5. What’s something in your community or city that needs fixing or improving?

Our ‘main street’ business area desperately needs improving. For almost a year, the city has been busy replacing the sidewalks and adding new street lights on main street. The problem is, there are very few businesses located on main street anymore. There’s NO PLACE TO SHOP THERE! Most of the downtown buildings are old, and in bad need of repair, too. Our downtown area consists merely of a bank, a gas station, a Christian preschool, two drugstores, a Chinese restaurant, two barber shops, two beauty salons, a couple of insurance offices, and two thrift stores.

6. Share a song you enjoy that mentions flowers or a specific flower in its title.

“Kiss From A Rose” by Seal.

7. April 22nd is Earth Day…do you believe there’s life on other planets? That wasn’t the question you were expecting was it?

No, that wasn’t quite the question I was expecting, Joyce 🙂 I’ve never really given much thought about life on other planets, so I’ll say “no”.

Random:

I’m so proud of how much our grandchildren are learning these days! Their mothers spend a lot of time working with them, and their little minds are like sponges soaking up the knowledge they’re exposed to! Our four-year-old grandson, Caden, counted to 100 for me yesterday! Our granddaughter, Madison, age six, has been learning the books of the Bible. I don’t have a video of Caden counting, but here’s a little video of Madison naming the books of the New Testament:

I’ve missed being able to join up with “Meet Me On Monday” for the past few weeks. Recently, one of my newest blog friends, Heather, from “Acting Balanced”has begun to host the meme. (Thanks, Heather!) If you’d like to join in, simply click on Heather’s button at the top of this post!

The last movie I saw in a theater was “Toy Story 3”. These days, I rarely see a movie trailer that makes me want to make the 30 mile trip (one way) to the movies–or pay those ridiculous ticket prices! More often than not, when I finally see most movies on dvd, I usually end up commenting, “I’m glad I didn’t go to the movies to see that one”!

3. What is your least favorite TV program?

These days, my least favorite TV program is the news. It’s all politics–UGH! I’m so sick of it.

4. If you were to write a book about yourself, what would you name it?

I would title my book the same as my blog–“Reflections By Kathy”.

5. What 3 places that are on your bucket list to visit?

I’m not choosy–as long as it’s three places with clear, blue water, and white sandy beaches! Recently, I’ve been doing some research on the Florida Keys. My husband and I discussed taking a cruise for our 40th anniversary, but he’s gotten “cold feet” since the recent cruise ship disaster. Dang it!

Weekend Wrap Up:

The best way to describe the weekend here is–windy and wet. We had two windy days, and received two inches of rain! We are thankful for the rain, because we desperately needed it…The wind? Not so much. I nearly had a heart attack when a small tree limb fell on top of our tin roof and made a clatter! However, our granddaughter, Madison, had a good time flying her new kite in the stiff breeze!

Over the weekend, Ed and I were able to spend lots of time with family, and we even had a little belated birthday celebration, when our oldest son showed up with an ice cream cake, for his wife, on Friday evening! (Her birthday fell on Wednesday, and there had been no time to celebrate due to church commitments)

I watched two old movies over the weekend. The first was “Look Who’s Talking”, which I’d seen a couple of times, but that was a long, long time ago. The second movie was “The Big Chill” which I’d never seen, but watched on the advice of blog friend Kathy, from Just Stuff From A Boomer. Kathy was so right, the soundtrack (lots of Motown music) was fabulous, and the movie was pretty good, too! Kevin Kline was killing me in his jogging short-shorts! The stars in both movies have something in common with me–we’ve all aged a lot since the 80’s! Have a great Monday…

On Friday evening, we kicked off our weekend by having a family dinner at our oldest son’s home. Daughter-in-law, Christina, fed us a meal of baked spaghetti and Italian bread, plus cheese cake and cookies for dessert. The meal was delicious, and I really enjoyed letting someone else do the cooking! I especially appreciate Christina doing the hosting since it’s hot, and she’s pregnant! Summertime is twice as hot when you’re pregnant, don’t you think?

the grandchildren playing in Christina's kitchen

Saturday morning I woke up, and oddly enough, I wasn’t in the mood to blog. Turning on my computer is usually the second thing I do in the mornings, but on Saturday I passed the computer by. It’s a good thing–because I found out later, from my daughter, that the internet wasn’t working! We had a storm on Friday evening, perhaps that had something to do with our loss of service. It was well into the afternoon before our service was restored, so I didn’t spend much time on the internet yesterday. However, I did spend some time on the computer though–tagging and organizing photographs! Will I ever get all of those photographs finished? Only seven thousand more to go!

Ed spent most of Saturday over at our daughter’s house–working in her bathroom. He was reconstructing a bathroom wall that he de-constructed when we moved from there four years ago.

It’s a long story, but when we were building our new house, we needed spindles for a wall to close in the end of the bathtub in our new house. At the time we couldn’t find any spindles like we needed, so we took the ones from our old bathroom–and left a hole in the wall where the spindles once were. I hated leaving the hole in the wall, but I was sort of happy that we were taking a piece of our former home with us–actually it was seven pieces, in the form of spindles!

the partial wall that we made with spindles taken from our old house

As of yesterday afternoon, our daughter’s house has the wall repaired–with new white spindles. (Her wall looks similar to mine) If you’re wondering why a wall would stay unrepaired for nearly four years, it’s because nobody used that part of the house until recently, when our granddaughter, Madison, moved in the bedroom next to that bathroom.

I baked frozen pizza for supper last night. Exciting, huh? It was the second time that I used my oven this week, and for the second time, the food came out undercooked…Hmmm, I’m thinking I might be having oven problems! ( Darn, after I just wrote a post about my stove, too!) Now I’ll have to bake something else, just to be sure if the oven’s working right…dang it! My hubby remarked at supper, “It’s been a while since we’ve seen Jimmy, the repairman”, to which I answered, “Not long enough!”

Later in the evening, I actually sat down and watched a movie on television. It was entitled How Do You Know starring Reese Witherspoon. It was the first movie I’d watched in several months, and I found myself saying, “I’d be mad if I’d paid good money to see this!” It wasn’t a really bad movie, it just wasn’t good enough to make me want to pay twenty dollars (ticket plus popcorn and coke) to see it! Call me old, but that’s my opinion of most movies these days.

Today, hubby is outside changing the oil in my car, and rotating the tires. Doesn’t that sound like a barrel of fun?! I’m grateful that he’s a “do it yourself” kind of guy, at least we can save some money on car maintenance. We can use the money saved…to pay the appliance repairman! Enjoy what’s left of the weekend…see ya’ tomorrow!

I enjoy going to the movies. However, the closest theater is about twenty-eight miles away from here. I’m at a place in my life where it has to be a really special movie to get me to make the effort to see it. Most of the movies that are being made these days are a far cry from being special, but that’s just my humble opinion. However, there was a time when some great movies were being made, and I became a “regular” at the movies.

In 1989 both of my parents became very ill, and were in a hospital in the city for over four months. I’d get up every weekday morning, get two of my children ready and off to school, send the youngest child to stay with Ed’s daddy, then make the drive to the city to the hospital. I’d visit my parents in the hospital until shortly after lunch, then turn around and make the trip back home. It was a three hour, one-hundred and ten mile trip–every day. That was my way of life for over four months. It’s no wonder that after a while, I became stressed out.

There was a movie theater on my way in and out of the city. One day I decided to stop and watch an early movie on my way home. I enjoyed myself so much, I began to make it a regular habit a day or so a week. I’d get some popcorn and a coke, watch a movie, and totally forget my worries for about two hours. Among the movies that I remember seeing were Steel Magnolias, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, and Rain Man. Dances Wtih Wolves is the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen on the big screen, but RainMan is my favorite movie of all times. I’ve seen it over twenty times! Sometimes I think those movie days helped me keep my sanity.

When our children were young, there was a drive-inn movie located about twenty-five miles from our house. The drive-inn showed two different movies at the same time and it only cost “a dollar a car load” on Wednesday nights. We had a Suburban back then, so we’d load everybody up and go to the drive-inn on Wednesday nights. Usually one of the two movies was something that we all wanted to see. Occasionally some of us would be watching one movie while the rest watched the other movie. That was always interesting! We picked up the sound of the movie through radios. I still remember watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at that drive-inn, and laughing until I cried!

After our children grew up, my husband and I would sometimes go to Saturday or Sunday afternoon matinée. He doesn’t really care much about movies, but always takes me to see one if I ask him to. One particular day we were at the theater and it was raining hard. We noticed that there were some leaks in the ceiling of the theater. About half-way through the movie, a large section of the ceiling fell on some people seated across the aisle from us. When the ceiling fell in, at least a bucket full of water fell with it! The poor people got drenched and had to leave. I was so grateful that we weren’t sitting there. I can’t remember what movie we were watching, but my husband says it was probably something with Tom Cruise in it!

Times have changed and I don’t go to the movies much anymore. In fact the last movie that I went to see was a Veggie Tales movie, and I went to see it with my grandchildren this past summer! I’m a little old for Veggie Tales, but I watched my grandchildren’s faces more than I watched the movie. It was their first movie experience! The popcorn was still just as good as I remembered it was. You just can’t beat that movie theater popcorn!